Star Trek Classics #3: Encounters with the Unknown |
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Collection published: 2012 Contents originally published: 2000-01 Read: April 2026 |
Background Assists by Philip Moy
Like Enemy Unseen, this "Star Trek Classics" release on Hoopla from IDW takes a Wildstorm trade paperback from the 2000s and rebrands it. While Enemy Unseen collected several otherwise unrelated Next Generation stories, this one collects four Voyager stories, three double-length one-shots and one three-part miniseries. I was surprised that the obviously intentionally vague title Encounters with the Unknown is actually pretty applicable to all four stories even though it feels like it could be applied to almost any Star Trek story if you squinted hard enough!
The first story is "False Colors," whose basic premise is that Voyager encounters what seems to be a Borg ship, but turns out to be something else entirely, and then Seven, Chakotay, and Tuvok must infiltrate it in the guise of Borg drones... leading to Seven possibly starting her own little collective. Like Perchance to Dream from Enemy Unseen, it reads like it's written by someone who is new to the comics medium: lots of word balloons, few visually interesting things near the beginning, the kind of stuff that might make for a fine episode of the tv show but is dull on the comics page. When the interesting conceit of the story finally turns up—would it be ethical for Seven to establish a "collective" of her own if it helps protect Voyager? how would she feel if she did?—it's not really used in an interesting way, the characters don't seem to actually face a dilemma due to it.
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| I felt like the whole comic might have been constructed around the idea of the shocking cover image of Seven as a Borg—which to be fair, was similar to how several actual Voyager episodes were developed. from Star Trek: Voyager: False Colors #1 (script by Nathan Archer, art by Jeffrey Moy & Philip Moy and W. C. Carani) |
The second story in this volume is the one story I can say I've wholeheartedly enjoyed across both volumes of Star Trek Classics that I read. "Avalon Rising" is about the Doctor being sent to an alien planet to recover an artifact blocking transporters; the planet is in a medieval time period, and its knights and squires interpret the Doctor as a wizard from a distant land, a role he ends up leaning into. It's delightful stuff: visually interesting (artist David A. Roach proves every bit as adept with this Doctor as the one he normally illustrates) and the dialogue and character arc for Bob Picardo's Doctor are pitch perfect (the writing is by the unknown-to-me wife-and-husband team of Janine Ellen Young and Doselle Young). It's the kind of premise you could image them doing on screen, but they never did, reminiscent of some screen episodes (sort of a mix of "Heroes and Demons" and "Muse" and "Living Witness") without being derivative of them. Neat conceit as the Doctor retells stories of Voyager's adventures through a medieval lens, a nice heartwarming ending. Honestly, one of the best Star Trek comics I've ever read.
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| Unlike any other story in the volume, this one was clearly constructed around interesting visuals suited to the comics medium. from Star Trek: Voyager: Avalon Rising #1 (script by Janine Ellen Young & Doselle Young, art by David Roach) |
Next comes "Elite Force," which I guess must be an adaptation of the videogame of the same name. Despite writing by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, stalwarts of space adventures comics in general (e.g., Legion Lost) and Star Trek comics in particular (e.g., Early Voyages), I found this hard to grab onto; the "Hazard Team" characters just don't give us enough to care about. Plus (and this isn't their fault) two stories about derelict Borg and scavengers in one volume is too many!
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| This guy's entire personality is "dumb jock." from Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force #1 (script by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, art by Jeffrey Moy & W. C. Carani) |
Lastly there's Planet Killer, a three-part miniseries about Voyager coming across another iteration of the same weapon as in "The Doomsday Machine" from the original series. The beginning is too slow and obvious considering the reader already knows what's up even if the characters don't; the second issue wastes half its pages on Harry Kim laboriously recapping "Doomsday Machine" for some reason; the third issue is very rushed, with a lot of stuff happening in reported speech or narration, instead of on the page. Like "False Colors," too talky for a comic, and despite some good efforts by artists Robert Teranishi (who I don't know) and Claude St. Aubin (who did strong work on DC's R.E.B.E.L.S. a few years after this), the action sequences lack the necessary intensity to make the premise work. The guest character feels like an afterthought (contrast them to Commodore Decker in the episode this story very closely mirrors).
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| Probably the best part of the art were all the ship-in-danger shots; very well done. from Star Trek: Voyager: Planet Killer #3 (script by Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch, art by Robert Teranishi & Claude St. Aubin) |
So, on the whole, aside from "Avalon Rising," there's little here I'd call "classic." (Oh, also my Hoopla edition has a mistake where what's included as the first page of "False Colors" is actually the first page of "Elite Force." I think the first page of "False Colors" is missing as a result.)
